Sometimes you just have one of those days...or weeks...

Anyone got a handkersniff?
We're running out here...
Well it has been a real downer this past few weeks in our Mountain Hovel...
My eldest son brought a right rotter of a bug back with him and then 0h-so generously gave it to his siblings who then passed it around, like a parcel, but no fun opening it ;o) then we all caught another one straight afterwards! :o(

Never mind though...at least it means you get to just 'sit' for a while...none of this awfully disgusting stuff like 'cleaning' or 'ironing' *shudder*...can't do any of that nonsense with a bug ;o)

This charcoal study looks quite a bit like the way I'm feeling at the moment...
You know that feeling you get when you have just gotten over a bug and another one is fast approaching ready to kick you when you're looking the other way?
Why can't they just visit you with a nice chocolate cake instead?
Much more friendly!

I've also had some time to do some painting though, so I can't grumble (too much) and I'll show some of them soon...as soon as I get some more hankies...

Have you all been enjoying yourselves now the weather is being more agreeable?
It's warm here but the high wind keeps whipping up and taking the electrics with it...I know last time it fried all of the computers so we all run to switch everything off when we hear the howling approach!
It's all very 'Wuthering Heights' and terribly dramatic when it whistles round the house!
Although a friend in Ohio tells me that her roof was blown off recently!!!
Wow...that makes ours seem so trivial!

Good thing the houses up the Welsh mountains were built by hand, from rocks dug up out of the surrounding fields (no machinery in those days)...our walls are two feet thick so I think those 'primitive' folks knew a thing or two about strength in high places...they were certainly built to last up here...even though it does mean the houses are all like a reversed Tardis...big on the outside and pokey inside...and the gaps between the stones allow critters to tunnel through the walls and appear in all sorts of places!
I can honestly say now that I am an hexpert ;o) at catching mice!
If you ever need to catch mice (humanely of course) they LOVE peanut butter!
And chocolate...so all of that stuff about cheese is a load of rubbish!
I have even seen a tiny mouse drag a huge chocolate biscuit off...
We have been visited, courtesy of our stone walls and their gaps, by bank voles, shrews (all kinds), field mice, wood mice, giant spiders which are the size of voles! and all manner of lovely things.

At the moment the bats are enjoying all of the moths and flies outside and we have already been visited by the cuckoos, who have come an awfully long way just to fob their offspring off on some poor little bird (they are either very cruel or rather clever, I'm not sure which)
And don't get me started on rats!
Thankfully they all live in the far away fields by the streams!
The moles were very busy through the winter piling up lots of little hills everywhere, so there is absolutely no way you could be 'lawn proud' here, but we scoop up the hills and use them for compost, so we don't mind the visits from the 'Little Gentlemen in Velvet Waistcoats'
Last year was very bad for the swallows, so I'm hoping that they're okay and some make it back...no sign yet though...
We also have adders, which frightened the wits out of me at first... but now I just stand and watch them winding their way through the plants and don't imagine them digging their sharp fangs into everyone you love! ;o) though now the children are older I'm a little less worried as I've read that a bite from an adder is very unlikely to kill an adult (just small children and pets!) and you are more likely to die from being hit by lightning than from being bitten by a snake!
That is SO comforting...;o( and anyway....we are all like lightning rods up here!
We are the first things it goes for...we can watch it move over the sky and see it land over on the other mountains!

Now aren't you all glad you don't live in a run-down old farmhouse in Wales? he he he
Oh dear...I've written a book about it all now haven't I?

Sorry folks...pass me a hankie and I'll be on my way...;o)